Sunday, May 6, 2012

NIPPON CONNECTION ’12 REVIEW: The Sound of Light

ひかりのおと
(Hikari no oto)

Released: 2011

Director: Juichiro Yamasaki

Starring:

Yoshitomo Fujihisa

Toyoyuki Sato

Yoshiko Nakamoto

Eri Mori

Running time: 89 min.

Reviewed by Marc Saint-Cyr

“The Sound of Light” is a film
entirely set in one of the tougher corners of the world; a place where hard
work is a minimum requirement for making a living – and not even that can
guarantee prosperity or even survival. Yoshitomo Fujihisa plays the main
character Yusuke, a young man who, three years prior to the events of the film,
moved back to his family’s farm in the mountain town of Maniwa in Okayama
Prefecture from Tokyo after his father (Toyoyuki Sato) badly injured his foot.
This move put Yusuke’s ambitions of pursuing a musical career on indefinite
hold – a necessary sacrifice so he could lend a much-needed hand in the many
physically demanding tasks dutifully upheld by his father and grandmother
(Junko Sato) over the years. A small dairy farm fighting off debt, the business
requires the constant feeding and milking of its cows, among other chores.
Here, routine and dedication are the defining factors of daily life, bringing a
regular flow of early mornings and toil.

The
events of “The Sound of Light” are overshadowed by a past event described in an
opening title card: three years ago, a dairy farmer named Natsuo Asano was
killed in a car accident that spared his wife Yoko (Eri Mori) and son Ryota.
These characters are tied to Yusuke’s family in various ways: Natsuo was best
friends with Yoshiyuki (Takeshi Masago), Yusuke’s uncle, and the two men worked
hard together to establish their own dairy farm. But in the wake of Natsuo’s
death, Yoshiyuki’s life and business collapsed into ruin to the point that he
now bears the reputation of a madman. Also, Yusuke is in love with Yoko and
hopes to marry her – a plan complicated by Ryota being the only remaining male
in the Asano family. If Yusuke and Yoko were to get married, the boy would have
to go live with his grandmother on Natsuo’s side so as to continue the Asano
family name, thus presenting Yoko with a difficult decision – and indicating
another way how family responsibilities shape the characters’ lives.

One
of the clear strengths of “The Sound of Light” is the total immersion into
small-town farming life it gives. The impressive Chugoku mountains surround the
town’s scattered farms, businesses and homes, emphasizing the rural isolation
in which the characters eke out a living. Work maintains a strong grip on daily
life: whether tending to vegetable patches, preparing meals or, most often,
tending to the cows, Yusuke and his family – including his sister Haruko
(Yoshiko Nakamoto) and her boyfriend Takashi (Soichiro Tsuji) who visit and
lend a hand in the various chores – constantly see to the tall order of
responsibilities that need to be met. Writer and director Juichiro Yamasaki,
himself a Maniwa farmer, admirably approaches such actions with a still,
observant eye that ably captures the quiet dedication of the farmers. The
viewer is made quite aware of the tolls such a lifestyle demands – especially
through Yoshiyuki, who is publicly regarded as a failure and a cautionary tale.
Having driven away his wife, he burns down his barn, gives in to drinking and
attempts suicide. His misfortunes show that it takes more than hard work to
survive in farming; that loyal friends and family serve as irreplaceable
supports for perseverance. But even then, the farmers are at the mercy of
forces beyond their control. In one integral dialogue scene, Yoshiyuki explains
to Yusuke how he and Natsuo had to contend with a sudden rise in feed costs
and, more importantly, people’s indifference to local businesses in favor of
convenience. “The harder you work, the less you get,” he says, underlining the
dire consequences of the growth of world markets at the cost of the farmers’
hard-won labors. This bitter truth is not dwelled upon for too long, but its
weight is certainly not lost on the viewer.

Impressively,
Yamasaki maintains an even balance between depicting the real-life textures and
issues of the farming community and the more narrative-dependent strand of the
film dedicated to Yusuke’s personal situation. Visiting a graveyard of
amplifiers in the woods and uncovering a hidden guitar and the organ his mother
gave to him before leaving the family (alluding to a rift between her and
Yusuke’s more farming-oriented father), he still clearly holds onto his love
for making music. His father even offers to give him a saved bundle of one
million yen to help re-ignite the distant dream of returning to Tokyo. Yet Yusuke
remains bound to the important sense of duty that has kept him at the farm. As
a son and the heir to the farm, the weight of expectation lies heavily upon his
shoulders, even if his family grants him the permission necessary to break
away.

“The
Sound of Light” gives an even and honest portrayal of farming life, neither
exaggerating the great endurance it requires nor holding it up as a utopian
alternative to the light and bustle of Tokyo, which has never felt so distant
in a Japanese film as it does here. But occasionally, Yamasaki allows for
moments of hope and beauty: the night scene in which an actual calf is born,
Yusuke’s song to his mother quietly performed in a cold barn, the annual climb
up a nearby mountain on the morning of New Year’s Day to see the first sunlight
of the year. Such scenes make Yusuke’s journey seem worth the challenges it has
brought him, confirming that the sacrifices he made were willingly and, at
times, perhaps even gladly chosen.

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